Keeping up with the times

The following post comes from notes I took at an APME NewsTrain conference I attended in May. It was a great experience, and I learned a lot!

The Web world is rapidly changing, and sometimes scary. Data shows audience members say accessibility of content is more important than quality. But quality is something newspapers don’t want to sacrifice. And in a way, quality does matter because unlike a print edition, there is no guaranteed readership. The content has to attract readers. So the challenge for the newspapers is for them to create easily accessible sites that have accurate news the faster than other outlets.

This is not an easy feat for an industry that is not doing well financially, especially when Web advertising has hit a plateau. And furthermore, the media isn’t the main conduit for advertisers anymore. It’s search engines. The top-10 sites in Web traffic received 70 percent of the money from advertisers this past year.

The model for disseminating news has changed. No longer is the press the only way for news to move to readers. Because of the Internet, the press is just one outlet for people to get information. Competitors include the government, companies and archives. Many readers access newspaper Web sites though “side doors.” The San Jose Mercury News estimates two-thirds of their audience come from Web site aggregates.

Newspapers have to be more creative. Some newspapers have paired with big name sites for presenting their content. The Miami Herald offers podcasts on iTunes, and The Chicago Tribune has its own site that’s part of YouTube.com. Other newspapers have accounts on social networking and microblogging Web sites (Facebook.com, Twitter.com, etc.), and content is continually updates. Why? Because these programs in a way serve as an editor of content, and subscribers, such as Facebook friends, could get updates on their News Feeds.

And part of this shift comes from the change in a newsroom’s focus. News is switching from a once-daily product to an always-on product. And newsrooms need to be more proactive. It’s no longer just one deadline at 4:30 p.m. I’m a fan of college newspapers, and some newspapers, like the one of my alma mater, The Daily Reveille, have done a great job of staggering deadlines to allow updates all the time.

Most readers want breaking news. But readers also look to their newspaper to watch their backs, wallets and neighborhoods. This can be a huge task on journalists, especially because they are busy as it is. Are there too many tasks being piled on reporters? It’s just not about writing a story in a crunch anymore. Now there are Web extras, such as video, audio, slideshows and interactive graphics. Will the quality suffer? Journalists are not the first profession to face these same questions, but it is interesting to look at why so much more is piled on reporters. Why isn’t more of the burden focuses on circulation teams? It’s distribution of Web news in a way.

Other cool ideas I learned or thought of while poring through my notes:

• The fear that the Web world has too many contributors is grossly unfounded. Of 100 people online, one creates content, 10 interact with content and 89 view content. 50 percent of Wikipedia.com articles are edited and written by 0.7 percent of its users. 0.5 percent of YouTube.com users upload videos.
• The comment function not only allows interactivity for readers, it also gives an easy feedback function to consumers. And in a way, these comments make us better journalists because you get a response on how consumers react to content.